51817661
submission
pacopico writes:
A series of robberies in Silicon Valley have start-ups feeling nervous. According to this report in Businessweek, a couple of networking companies were burgled recently with attempts made to steal their source code. The fear is that virtual attacks have now turned physical and that espionage in the area is on the rise. As a result, companies are now doing more physical penetration testing, including one case in which a guy was mailed in a FedEx box in a bid to try and break into a start-up.
51677201
submission
pacopico writes:
With a new PUE score of 1.04, Facebook's Swedish data center has officially become the world's most efficient computing center. As Businessweek reports, the iron inside is made up of all Open Compute designs — including servers, storage and top of rack switches — that come from Asian ODMs. According to the venture capitalist Peter Levine hundreds of billions of dollars in data center purchases could swing toward the Facebook-style designs and put a world of hurt on companies like IBM, Dell, HP and Cisco — all of which are fighting back to varying degrees.
51239231
submission
pacopico writes:
About 30 years ago, a young Marine and math savant named Ramona Pierson was out for a run when she got hit by a drunk driver and had her body shattered. As Businessweek reports, Pierson ended up in coma for 18 months, came out blind and emaciated and was sent to live in an old folks home. Her remarkable story takes off from there to include bike racing through Russia, a PhD in neuroscience, a stint fixing Seattle's public schools and now Declara, a social network run by Pierson and funded by billioniare Peter Thiel, who put the original money into Facebook. One of the more original start-up tales to have ever come out of Silicon Valley or really anywhere.
48760231
submission
pacopico writes:
Telsa Motors has started churning out 500 of its all electric Model S sedans per week. Bloomberg Businessweek just did a cover story about the company, suggesting that Tesla is becoming more than just a fad of rich folks in California. According to the story, 75 percent of Tesla's sales now come from outside of California, and the company appears poised to raise its sales forecasts for the year. There's a lot of talk about Tesla's history and why it survived when Fisker and Better Place failed too.
48725653
submission
pacopico writes:
A former Ford executive has taken his unique brand of factory training to the public. According to Businessweek, Hossein Nivi has set up a new company called Pendaran that forces people to endure a week-long, manic training simulation that's meant to produce safer, better workers. The participants — lots of people from the tech and military fields — get yelled at by actors while they try to assemble things like golf carts and airplanes in a simulation that mixes virtual tasks on computers with real world tasks. After their spirits get broken, the workers actually start functioning as a well-oiled team. It sounds both awesome and bizarre.
46347279
submission
pacopico writes:
Every night, Netflix accounts for about one-third of the downstream Internet traffic in North America, dwarfing all of its major rivals combined. Bloomberg Businessweek has a story detailing the computer science behind the streaming site. It digs into Netflix's heavy use of AWS and its open-source tools like Chaos Kong and Asgard, which the Obama administration apparently used during the campaign. Story seems to suggest that the TV networks will have an awful time mimicking what Netflix has done.
45967643
submission
pacopico writes:
Shortly after its 2011 IPO, LinkedIn's infrastructure almost collapsed. The company had been running on decade's old technology and needed a major overhaul to keep up with other social sites. As Businessweek reports, LinkedIn initiated something called Project Inversion to fix its issues and has since evolved into one of the poster children for continuous development and creating open source infrastructure tools. But the story also notes that LinkedIn's technology revival has come with some costs, including constant changes that have bothered some users.
45692635
submission
pacopico writes:
In what was only a matter of time, software developers have started hiring agents to represent them in contract negotiations. Businessweek found a firm called 10X Management that has former music managers handling the careers of about three dozen programmers. The claim is that the coders are getting much higher rates — $200 to $300 per hour — through the arrangement, while the agents take a 15 percent cut for striking business deals and managing their careers.
45562457
submission
pacopico writes:
Eve Online recently crossed the 500,000 player maker, marking it as one of the oldest, most successful MMOs of all time. Businessweek went to Iceland to get the inside story on CCP, the company behind Eve, and how it helped create this insanely devoted following. The story bills Eve as one of the purest studies in economics and human nature. “It’s part game and part soap opera and part shadow economy,” says Ted Brown, a video game designer and Eve aficionado. “There’s basically a whole virtual society that has emerged inside of Eve.”
39645411
submission
pacopico writes:
There's a 30-acre plot of land in Maysville, MO where about two dozen people have gathered to build a Civilization Starter Kit. As Businessweek reports, they're working on open-source versions of bulldozers, bread ovens, saws and other tools right on up to robots and chip fabs. The project has been dubbed the Factor e Farm, and it's run by a former nuclear physicist and a bunch of volunteers. The end goal is to have people modify the tool designs until they're good enough to compete with commercial equipment.
38440497
submission
pacopico writes:
Much has been made about Facebook hitting 1 billion users. But Businessweek has the inside story detailing how the site actually copes with this many people and the software Facebook has invented that pushes the limits of computer science. The story quotes database guru Mike Stonebraker saying, "I think Facebook has the hardest information technology problem on the planet." To keep Facebooking moving fast, Mark Zuckerberg apparently institued a program called Boot Camp in which engineers spend six-weeks learning every bit of Facebook's code.
33273821
submission
pacopico writes:
Bloomberg Businessweek reports that DARPA will pay for the creation of two new TechShops in Washington D.C. and Pittsburgh. The $3.5 million deal includes 2,000 TechShop memberships for military veterans and will have DARPA employees performing top secret work at night. They're part of the iFab team, trying to make factories that can be reconfigured on-the-fly through software. Maker mayhem.
